Lucien's book discussion will be part of a panel on new books, Lançamento de Livros, and will take place on Tuesday 26th October, 18:15-19:00, presumably in the Auditório da Reitoria at UFSC.For more on the conference, see here.

Lucien will also be presenting a paper at this conference, on “Indian revolutionary syndicalists in Durban, South Africa, 1915-1921: race, class and Indian Ocean networks”. This is provisionally scheduled for the 7pm session in the Auditório da Reitoria on Monday 25th October.

There will also be Black Flame events in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, in the week of 1-6 November.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

On Monday, South African journalist and author Michael Schmidt delivered a lecture at Wilfrid Laurier University, where he discussed the influence of social anarchism and syndicalism on labour structures and class movements.

Schmidt’s talk focused on the tradition of anarchism as presented in his book Black Flame (Counter-power, Volume 1), which he co-wrote with Lucien van der Walt, a professor at the University of Witwatersrand.

“We actually wound up with a much broader tradition than we expected,” said Schmidt. Black Flame analyzes the impact of anarchy around the world in the last 150 years, beginning with what Schmidt identified as its first wave from 1867 to 1894.

Schmidt exemplified later movements that had a greater impact on class and labour structures with the development of an international union called the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

The formation of the IWW – whose power peaked in the 1920s – is one of several “organized industrial trade unions [viewed] as a radical working class movement,” according to Schmidt.

Schmidt attributed the growth of what began as a maritime application to syndicalism with the growth of the IWW.

“Through seafaring members of the IWW and returning immigrants, the idea of industrial unionism spread to Australia, Latin America and Europe.” Finally, Schmidt explained that anarchism today is in the form of anti-capitalist movements.

He concluded by quoting an edition of the New York Times: “Anarchism remains an idea that will not die.”

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Professor Lucien van der Walt works at Rhodes University, South
Africa, and is (with Steve Hirsch) editor of Anarchism and
Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1880-1940: The
Praxis of Class Struggle, National Liberation and Social
Revolution (2010). He has published widely on labour and left
history, political economy, and anarchism and syndicalism, and is
involved in union education and working class movements.